Been reading this fairly rare little book from 1951, have seen "Schuetzen" rifles here and there but never knew much about them. Turns out 200 yard matches were all the rage in the late 1800s, which is what those rifles were built for. Started out as black powder rifles, as soon as smokeless came out shooters figured out that "duplex" loads with 5 or so grains of smokeless made cleaning easier.

Biggest revelation to me, which I had never heard of, was that for maximum accuracy top shooters loaded their cartridges with a wad over the powder and seated the bullet in the barrel 1/16th of an inch in front of the case, using either a special starter or a dummy case made just for seating the bullet.

New to me.

It sounds like a good read. There used to be a custom boot maker in Lampassass not far from here that was a friend to a saddle maker buddy of mine who told me that when he (the bootmaker) was in war 2 he "liberated" enough shuetzen rifles w/ their dies to line his basement walls. When he was dying in the hospital his son who was on drugs came in cleaned him out. Nothing was ever recovered.

The really persnickity shooters would only use ONE case, decapping and reloading it for each shot. There were special cases made specifically for this use called "Everlast".

MOA groups at 200 yards with peep sights weren't rare.